According to Emmanuel Agyemang-Badu, a former Ghana international, the Black Stars’ problems are a result of the national junior teams being allowed to fail.
He claims that the success of the senior national team in the past can be attributed to the deliberate effort made by the youth teams.
Only Mohammed Kudus from the Black Starlets U-17 World Cup squad in 2017 has been a regular in the senior national team; none of Ghana’s male young teams have competed internationally since then.
There hasn’t been any significant success at the Black Stars level, and with time, their results have been worse.
Agyemang-Badu claims in an interview with the BBC that the senior national team’s foundation is inadequate.
“The last four or five years have been really tough for Ghana. The fundamental frameworks that often aid in our qualification for important tournaments, or the public’s awareness of our sport, have evolved,” he stated.
“Our junior teams are our nation’s greatest asset as it is where we get the guys who develop into the Black Stars. Our weapon, which is where we obtain our players, has now completely failed. The CHAN squad is not functioning, the U-20 is not functioning, and the national U-17 has crumbled.”
The former U-20 World Cup champion gave instances of young players’ gradual assimilation into the senior squad.
“If you look at 2000, we had Derek Boateng, Sulley Muntari, and Michael Essien;
After losing to Sudan on Tuesday, October 15, the Black Stars are in danger of not qualifying for the Africa Cup of Nations in 2025.
We’ve got to the stage where it’s hard for us to get into even the AFCON. We must return to the fundamentals because things have been awful over the past four years,” he said.
After Sudan and Angola in the qualification series, the Black Stars need to win their next two games in November and hope that the Falcons of Jediane lose theirs in order to advance.
